Hands-on with the Seek Thermal camera add-on accessory

Want to see in the dark? There's a cool accessory for your phone that is going to make that possible. Seek Thermal (thermal.com) is a portable camera that plugs into smartphones which adds the ability of thermal imaging. Multi-thousand dollar thermal cameras have been used by firefighters, law enforcement and the military to see through smoke or in complete darkness. Now, you can use that kind of imaging technology with your smartphone. We met with Seek Thermal this week for a demo — check out the video above.

The Seek Thermal camera is a small device that plugs into the microUSB connector on Android devices (we used it on a Galaxy S5 and the Lightning connector on iOS devices. It weighs only 0.5 ounces and creates true thermal images with a resolution of 206 x 156. It comes with a free app from Google Play and the App Store.

Seek Camera app features:

Take and share thermal photos and videos.

Select from four different temperature measurement modes including the ability to automatically highlight everything in the scene that is above or below a specified temperature.

Select from nine different color palettes. Technically called "LUTs," they are different color ranges that can be applied to temperature measurements.

Swipe back and forth between a regular and a thermal image in Thermal+ mode

Now, you're probably asking why you would want to use Seek Thermal camera. Other than it looks pretty cool, there are actually some handy usage for it. For example, you can identify leaky windows and doors, or other sources of energy loss. You can also trace water damage up a wall or across a ceiling to its source. If you let your dog out at night, you can scan your yard for other animals that might be harder to see in low light.

The Seek Thermal camera is available now for $199 at thermal.com. It will be available at Amazon and major national retail stores later this fall. Is this a cool accessory you could see yourself using? Let us know what you think in the comments!